Field Nurse RN concerns

Hi all, i'm new here and I was hoping if any nurses can fill me in on what to expect as a field nurse hopefully, some of you here are familiar with this position and give me first hand experience. From what i understand we get a list of patients that require care, they may be with the healthcare company you work for or not. Your job is to contact these people and set up and appointment with them. After that has been set up, you travel to their location and perform and assessment of the environment, check their medications and fill out paper work. After that you hand your assessment to the agency and they will pay you X amount per patient. Anyone have any input? I am currently a recently graduated ASN looking to go to more schooling. This job looks like a great job as it sounds like it works with my schedule and how much i make depends on how much time i have. I'm afraid its too good to be true.

Hello. I'm an LPN and I used to work as a field nurse doing home health/ hospice and those are some of the job duties that will be performed as a field nurse. When I first started I was on salary and we were paid for mileage. Then the nurses went to per visit and the mileage was a set rate per patient regardless how far you traveled. As a field nurse RN from what I saw on a daily basis b/c I was working under an RN they mostly did home visits including: admissions (SOC) resumptions, recertifications, discharges and a number of other things. They also performed supervised visits with the LPN and Cna. As you stated you will be performing assessments and any other skills services that are within your scope and the company's policy. I performed vp, vital signs, wound care, filled medi-planners, did 30 day progress notes to update md on patients status cause this kind of determined whether the pt would be D/C or recertified, called in refills, set up transportation for md visits, u/a's, wound vacs, and the list goes on. There are also other disciplines who may be in the home as well such as a PT, SW, dietician, OT, ST depending on the patients progress or acuity level! But the main thing besides communication with the doctor, contact the patient first to save yourself having a missed visit. Sorry so long but I enjoyed working as a field nurse and I hope you do also!

Mar 25, '13

As a new grad, you need to be practicing under the close supervision of an experienced preceptor for a while. How will you manage the unexpected events that may arise? What about validation of your physical assessment skills? Check with your BON to see whether they have recommendations for length of time a new grad needs to be precepted.